LONDON — Britain's future monarch, on its way today, will be known in history as the first Twitter-era royal baby, which might be one reason why the world's media seems to be so over-the-moon about it.

But is there really a difference in the media infatuation now and 31 years ago, the last time a royal-baby-future-monarch arrived? That was in 1982, when Prince William was born in the same London hospital to Prince Charles and his then-wife, Princess Diana, a media magnet then and all the way up to her death, in 1997, in a Paris car crash.

"It's not unprecedented," says The Guardian media columnist Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University London, in a phone interview. "People have short memories."

He says the media are not hyped up any more than before.

"We've always been completely mad in (the U.K.) on this strange paradox of wishing to maintain a monarchy in place while doing everything we can to make their life miserable and intrude on their privacy," he says. "And that existed during the time of Queen Victoria."

So the mob of jostling journalists and photographers assembled outside the hospital waiting for news? Maybe there are more stepladders and other camera equipment and maybe they've been there longer (since about July 1), but there was a similar mob back then.

"The level of interest in Princess Diana was huge, and definitely in 1982 when she was pregnant," Greenslade remembers. "Only a couple of months before, sneak pictures were published of her in a bikini on a Caribbean beach, leading to censure by the (press) regulator for infringing on her privacy, and that's just a tiny example of the massive press interest."

But what about Twitter and Facebook and other social media? What about 24-hour news networks? What about the huge growth of the celebrity media — tabloids, magazines, bloggers, online websites — since the 1980s? Isn't the media interest in the royals and celebs in general even more obstreperous and invasive now?

"It was a very, very big story back then (when William was born) but it's even bigger one now, particularly abroad and in the U.S.," says Phil Dampier, an author and former royal correspondent for London's Daily Express. "It's almost a bigger story (in the USA) than it is here. It's incredible."

A major difference today is the 24-hour news cycle, says Richard Kay, a longtime Daily Mail royals reporter who was known back in the day as a go-to journalist for media-savvy Diana.

"In 1982 the only way news was disseminated was through the press, (which) had a much more significant role," he says. Plus, there was more news competition at the time. "Britain had just been fighting a war in 1982 (to liberate the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic) and it was barely over. So there was that going on."

It's not just old, monarchy-worshiping Brits who follow the royals now, Dampier says. "With Twitter and Facebook, youngsters have latched on to the royals and are talking about them now, whereas three or fours years ago they weren't," he says.

Kay thinks social media make it more difficult to stop leaks, and the palace, more than ever before, is aware of the risks of keeping a lid on.

"If the baby is born in the early hours of (Tuesday) morning what are they going to do?," he says. "Do they wake the queen, aged 87, in the middle of the night? Do they risk Twitter getting the news from a nurse at the hospital? Or someone at the palace tweeting about it and therefore breaking it before they have a handle on it?"

But Greenslade is not convinced social media have made such a difference, at least not in the intensity of media interest. It's worth noting, he says, that despite the crowds of photographers staked out at the hospital, at Duchess Kate's Kensington Palace home and at her parents' home in rural Bucklebury over the last week, no one got a shot of her coming, going or even arriving at the hospital.

"Social media can't get at our royals because they are so neatly tucked away and protected all the time, so social media are irrelevant," he says. "The intensity of the world media is an entirely separate thing from what's going on in terms of people with their smartphones."

True, the media landscape today is unrecognizable; even prestige newspapers such as the New York Times and The Times of London are chasing after eyeballs with the same fervor as any scrappy tabloid, while celeb organs such as People are among the most successful publications on the planet.

But the real game-changer was the chaotic death of Diana, when the media were blamed by her family because her car was being chased by photographers when it slammed into a column in a Paris traffic tunnel. (Actually, multiple inquests later established that the crash happened because her driver was drunk and speeding and Diana wasn't wearing a seat belt.)

"William blamed the media for her death, at least in part," Dampier says. "And a lot of the media's working methods and practices have changed since (then). The press here just don't do what they used to."

Back in the 1980s, the media were more "out of control," Greenslade says, and Diana's death forced them to change. Also, without a First Amendment, there's more power to regulate the press in Britain than in the USA.

"The acute embarrassment (after Diana's death) has meant that newspapers are much less willing to take risks," Greenslade says. "Take, for instance, the topless pictures (of Duchess Kate last year). The press was restrained from publishing them (in the U.K.) because it feared the consequences of so doing.

The press will push at boundaries but will be very careful not to go too far," he adds. "They have learned to be cautious, and the palace has learned to be cunning."

Back in 1982, says Kay, the British media, at least, were slightly more deferential to the royal family; after that, not so much. "They were suddenly seen to be just like the rest of us," he says. "They couldn't keep their domestic lives together."

But some journalists are still a little deferential, Greenslade says, pointing to a story in today's Evening Standard. It's about a couple of photographers who apparently were the first to spot Duchess Kate entering the hospital just before 6 a.m. local time, and then to tweet it out ahead of the official palace tweet announcement.

But they didn't take a picture!

"We had decided in advance we were not going to take a photo of her," the paper quoted Jesal Parshotam explaining. "I made that decision — she's a woman in labour. I just wanted to photograph the commotion and convoy of cars. That was a personal decision we made. To take a picture of her would have been over-stepping the mark."

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